

.'Biy 



opf/ie as I 






THE HISTORIC POLICY OF THE Ul\ 
STATES AS TO ANNEXATION. 



A 



«V 







C ' A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 

AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 

AT Chicago, July 13, 1893. 



By SIMEON E. BALDWIN, l.hh^ 



'-X.'S' 



President of the New Haven Colony HisTORiOAi^^dofflfl.^'^ '-*P £-- 



Reprinted from the "Yale Review" for August, 189t 





/;■> ;-l 



i 



THE HISTORIC POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES 
AS TO ANNEXATION. 



The United States, according- to President Lincoln, 
was " formed in fact by the Articles of Association in 
1774." But the self-styled " Continental Congress," which 
framed those Articles, represented and claimed to repre- 
sent but a small portion of the American continent. The 
eleven colonies, whose delegates met at Carpenters Hall, 
October 20th, 1774, and those of the three counties of 
Delaware who sat with them on equal terms, though 
really a part of the proprietary government of Pennsyl- 
vania, were in actual possession of but a narrow strip of 
territory on the Atlantic seaboard, running back no 
farther than the line of the Alleghanies. To the south- 
ward lay Georgia, East Florida, West Florida and 
Louisiana; to the northward Nova Scotia, and Canada; 
and on their western frontiers Parliament had recently 
put the boundary of the new Province of Quebec. 

It was the hope of Congress that their ranks might be 
swelled by the accession of all the British colonies or 
provinces on our continent. On October 26th a stirring 
appeal to unite in the Articles of Association, adopted 
two days before, was addressed to the inhabitants of 
Quebec. " We def}' you," wrote Congress, " casting 
your view upon ever}^ side, to discover a single circum- 
stance, promising from any quarter the faintest hope of 
liberty to you or your posterity, but from an entire 
adoption into the Union of these colonies." .... 
" What," it was urged, " would your great countryman, 
Montesquieu, say to you, were he living to-day? Would 
not this be the purport of his address? * Seize the oppor- 
tunity presented to you by Providence itself. You have 
been conquered into liberty, if you act as you ought. 
This work is not of man. You are a small people, com- 
pared to those who with open arms invite you into a 
fellowship. A moment's reffection should convince you 



which will be most for your interest and happiness, to 
have all the rest of North America your unalterable 
friends, or your inveterate enemies. The injuries of 
Boston have roused and associated every colony from 
Nova Scotia to Georgia. Your province is the only link 
wanting to complete the bright and strong chain of union. 
Nature has joined your country to theirs. Do you join 
your political interests.' . . . . " We are too well 
acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing 
your nation to imagine that difference of religion will 
prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know 
that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates those 
who unite in her cause above all such low minded infirm- 
ities."' 

The address concluded with the recommendation that 
they should choose a Provincial Congress, which might 
send delegates to the next Continental Congress to be 
held at Philadelphia in May, 1775, and formally accede to 
the existing confederation, so that in resisting future 
aggressions they might rely no longer on the small 
influence of a single province, " but on the consolidated 
powers of North America." 

The Annual Register for 1775 truly says that "of all 
the papers published by the American Congress, their 
address to the French mhabitants of Canada discovered 
the most dextrous management, and the most able method 
of application to the temper and passions of the parties 
whom they endeavored to gain."' 

A correspondence with Canadian patriots was also be- 
gun by the Massachusetts committee of safety, and Sam- 
uel Adams was particularly earnest in his efforts to gain 
their support. 

In May, 1775, another address to the inhabitants of 
Canada was adopted by Congress, from the pen of Jay. 
It declared that " the fate of the Protestant and Catholic 
col(3nies was strongly linked together," and that Congress 
yet entertained hopes of a union with them in the defence 
of their common hberty.^ 

' Journals of Congress, I, 64. ' History of Europe, 32. 

* Journals of Congress, I, 109. 



5 

During the session of this Congress, an address from 
the inhabitants of several parishes in Bermuda was re- 
ceived, and a Canadian once appeared upon the floor. 
In November, the inhabitants of a district in Nova Scotia, 
which had elected a committee of safety, applied for 
admission into " the Association of the United Colonies.'" 

The proceedings of this Congress have come down to 
us in a very unsatisfactory state, owing to the fact that 
it was not deemed safe to print in the official journals all 
that was done. After forty years, a large part of what 
was originally suppressed was published by the govern- 
ment, under the style of the " Secret Journals of Con- 
gress," but no attempt was made to combine the two 
records or to supply an index to the whole. 

In July, 1775, Dr. Franklin brought forward a plan 
which had apparently been drawn up for submission in 
May, for " Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union " 
between " the United Colonies of North America." They 
provided for the accession of all the other British Colon- 
ies on the Continent, that is, Quebec, St. John's, Nova 
Scotia, East and West Florida, and the Bermuda Islands.'' 
Notwithstanding the care taken to suppress this pro- 
ceeding, a copy of the paper got across the ocean and 
was printed in full in the Annual Register for 1775.^ 

In the latter part of this year. Congress despatched 
agents to Canada and others to Nova Scotia to inquire 
particularly into the disposition of their inhabitants re- 
specting a union of interests with the more Southern 
Colonies. The Assembly of Jamaica had sent in a me- 
morial to the King in Council, which, while disclaiming 
any thought of forcible resistance, set up the claims of 
their inhabitants to self-government in language nearly as 
strong as that used by the Continental Congress.* The 
latter body responded in an address to the Assembly of 
Jamaica, thanking them for their sympathy, and saying 
that, while " the peculiar situation of your island forbids 
your assistance," they were glad at least to have their 
good wishes. 

' Journals of Congress, I, 230, 244. ^ Secret Journals of Congress, I, 283. 
3 State Papers, 252. •» Ann. Reg. for 1775 ; Hist, of Europe, 101. 



Soon afterwards three commissioners were appointed 
to repair to the Northern frontier, and endeavor " to in- 
duce the Canadians to accede to a union with these Col- 
onies " and to send delegates to Congress.' The com- 
missioners were authorized to pledge them " the free 
enjoyment of their religion,'"^ and to raise, if possible, a 
Canadian regiment for the Continental army. A few 
men did enlist, and such accessions were received from 
time to time that at last a full regiment was organized 
and officered, and a second one projected/ 

Early in 1776 another set of commissioners, headed b}' 
Franklin, were dispatched directly to Canada on a similar 
errand, bearing addresses from Congress, which were 
printed in French and English, and circulated extensively 
among the people.* The instructions of the commissioners 
were to assure the Canadians that their interests and ours 
were inseparably united, and to urge them to join us as a 
" sister colon}-." 

No impression seemed to be made by the addresses, 
and it was soon discovered that quite an adequate reason 
existed in the fact that not one out of five hundred of the 
population could read. Dr. Franklin, on his return, said 
that if it were ever thought best to send another mission, 
it should be one composed of schoolmasters. With a 
few of the leaders there, Franklin had better success, 
and during a fortnight something like a provisional 
government was set up, under his auspices, which, how- 
ever, melted into thin air on the approach of British 
troops.*" 

In June, 1776, Congress sent two ships to the Bermudas, 
carrying provisions, to relieve the distress caused by our 
non-importation association, and with directions to inquire 
into the disposition of the inhabitants, respecting a union 
of interests with ours.^ 

' Wa^ington strongly urges this course, in his letters from camp. Writ- 
ings; Spark's Ed. iii, 173. 
^ Journals of Congress, I, 242. 
" Writings of Washington, Sparks' Ed. , iv, 267. 

* Secret Journals of Congress, I, 42. * Journals of Congress, I, 305. 

* Secret Journals of Congress, I, 46. 



It is probable that the report was not encouraging, for 
when in July, 1776, Franklin's scheme for confederation 
was reported on by the committee which had had it under 
consideration for a year, the provision for bringing in the 
other English colonies was struck out, except so far as re- 
lated to Canada. She was to have the right to admission 
on request, but no other colony was to be admitted with- 
out the consent of nine States. ^ 

Provision was made by Congress, as soon as these Arti- 
cles were agreed on and sent out to the States for ratifica- 
tion, (Nov. 29, 1777) for having them translated into French 
and circulated among the Canadians, with an invitation 
" to accede to the union of these States.'"^ 

Our invasions of their territory, however, and their ill- 
success, had left little of the spirit of united resistance to 
British authority. Had the declaration of independence 
been made as early as the more fiery patriots would have 
had it, it is not impossible that Canada and Nova Scotia 
would have been swept into the current. Samuel Adams 
wrote in July, 1776, to a friend, that had it come in 1775, 
Canada, in his opinion " would at this time have been one 
of the United Colonies."^ 

In the fall of 1776, Franklin, then about to sail on his 
European mission, submitted to the secret committee of 
Congress his scheme for proposals of peace. These were 
that Great Britain should acknowledge our independence, 
and sell us Quebec, St. John's, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, 
East and West Florida and the Bahamas. In addition to 
payment of the purchase money, we were to grant free 
trade to all British subjects, and guarantee to Great Bri- 
tain her West India islands. In the paper explaining this 
scheme, Franklin states that, as to the colonies to be pur- 
chased, " it is absolutely necessary for us to have them 
for our own security. "■* 



' Secret Journals of Congress, I, 390 ; Annual Register for 1776, State 

Papers, p. 269. 
^ Secret Journals of Congress, II, 54. ^ Life of Samuel Adams, II, 434. 
4 Franklin's Works, I, 143. 



8 

In letters to English friends, while in France, he 
expressed similar views, saying that discord would con- 
tinually arise on the frontiers unless peace were cemented 
by the cession of Canada, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas.' 

John Adams entertained opinions of the same kind. In 
April, 1782, while in Holland, he was advised by Henry 
Laurens, one of our foreign commissioners who had been 
captured by a British man-of-war, and put in the Tower 
on a charge of treason, but was now at large on parole, 
that many of the opposition in England favored the sur- 
render of Canada and Nova Scotia. Mr. Adams replied 
that he feared that we could never have a real peace, with 
Canada or Nova Scotia in the hands of the English, and 
that at least we should stipulate in any treaty of peace 
that they should keep no troops or fortified places on the 
frontiers of either.^ 

A few days later, Dr. Franklin submitted to Mr. Oswald, 
with whom, as the Commissioner of Great Britain, the 
treaty of peace was afterwards negotiated, a paper sug- 
gesting the dangers of maintaining a long frontier be- 
tween countries the roughest of whose people would 
always inhabit their borders and outposts, and that Great 
Britain might well cede Canada to us, on conditions of a 
perpetual guaranty of free trade with that province, and 
a provision for indemnity for the losses both of Canadian 
loyalists and of Americans whose property had been 
burned in British invasions, out of the proceeds of sales 
of the public lands remaining ungranted.' 

The influence of France was from the first thrown 
against the enlargement of the United States by the ac- 
cession of any more of the British Colonies. As most of 
these had once been hers, she doubtless hoped that they 
might, some day, become again part of their mother 
country. Our treaty with her, of 1778, stipulated that 
should she capture any of the British West India islands, 
it should be for her own benefit, while if we should occupy 

' Franklin's Works, I, 311. 

^ See Washington's letter to Landon Carter, of May 30, 1778, to the same 

effect. Writings, Spark's Ed., v, 389. 
3 Franklin's Works, I, 480. 



the Northern colonies or the Bermudas, they should " be 
confederate with or dependent upon the said United 
States." 

The adoption of the present Constitution of the United 
States, in abrogating, by the voice of the majority, the 
Articles of Confederation, was a revolutionary proceeding, 
which threw two States out of the Union. North Caro- 
lina and Rhode Island, by refusing to ratify the work of 
the Convention of 1787, put themselves for a time certainly 
very near the position of foreign States. This conse- 
quence of their action was strongly urged in the North 
Carolina convention. " In my opinion " said Gov. John- 
son, one of its members, "if we refuse to ratify the 
Constitution, we shall be entirely out of the Union, and 
can be considered only as a foreign power. It is true 
the United States may admit us hereafter. But they may 
admit us on terms unequal and disadvantageous to us." 
" It is objected," replied the next speaker, " we shall be 
out of the Union. So I wish to be. We are left at liberty 
to come in at any time."' "In my opinion, said James 
Iredell, afterwards a Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, " when any State has once rejected the 
Constitution, it cannot claim to come in afterwards as a 
matter of right. If it does not in plain terms reject, but 
refuses to accede for the present, I think the other States 
may regard this as an absolute rejection, and refuse to 
admit us afterwards, but at their pleasure, and on what 
terms they please."'' 

When, however, in 1789 and 1790 these States reluc- 
tantly sent in their ratifications, no question was made 
about receiving them on equal terms with those by which 
the new government had been originally organized, and 
they came in on a footing of right. 

The United States of 1789 was in many respects a 
political combination of foreign communities. The At- 
lantic was almost the sole means of communication 
between the Northern and Southern States. The Hud- 

1 Elliot's Debates, IV, 223, 4. * ibid 331. 

2 



10 

son helped to bind Eastern New England to New York ; 
the Ohio and the Mississippi might lead from one scat- 
tered settlement to another; but of those who lived 
twenty miles from navigable water, it was only the favored 
or the adventurous few who had ever visited any State, 
except their own. 

To such a people there could be nothing startling in the 
acquisition of foreign territory. It could hardly be more 
foreign than much that was already within the Union. It 
could hardly be more distant, for a voyage from Phila- 
delphia to London or Marseilles took less time and money, 
and involved less risk and hardship, than a trip to Cincin- 
nati or Natchez. 

Gouverneur Morris said, at the time of the Louisiana 
purchase, that he had known since the day when the 
Constitution was adopted that all North America must at 
length be annexed.' 

At the close of the Revolutionary War, both England 
and America regarded the long frontier on the north of 
the United States as not unlikely to be soon the scene of 
renewed hostilities. John Adams, in October, 1785, 
writes from abroad to the Secretary of State, that some 
of the opposition in Great Britain were saying "that 
Canada and Nova Scotia must soon be ours ; there must 
be a war for it ; they know how it will end, but the sooner 
the better; this done, we shall be forever at peace; till 
then, never." 

But we had a boundary still more difficult to the south- 
ward. The end of the Seven Years' War in Europe had 
seen France cede to Spain New Orleans, with so much of 
her Louisiana territory as lay west of the Mississippi, and 
the rest to Great Britain. A cession from Spain of her 
claims on the Floridas had confirmed these as English 
possessions, and made the Mississippi their western bound- 
ary, but during our Revolutionary War, Spain had 
recaptured them, and -her title was confirmed by the 
peace of 1783. 

In 1800, Spain ceded back her Louisiana territories to 

' Writings, iii, 185. » Works, viii, 333. 



II 

France, and the century opened with Spain bounding us 
below Georgia, and France hemming us in at the mouth 
of the Mississippi, and by an undefined and, perhaps, in- 
definable stretch of territory running from the Gulf up 
towards the Canadian line. 

The leaders of the Revolutionary period who survived 
were united in the belief that it was vital to our interests 
to acquire the French title, Hamilton, ^ John Adams^ and 
Gouverneur Morris,^ were of this mind, not less than 
Jefferson, Madison, and Livingston. 

There was a serious question as to our right to make 
the purchase, and the administration represented the party 
which regarded the government as one of delegated 
powers to be strictly construed. The great leader of the 
other school, Daniel Webster, declared, in 1837, during 
the heat of the controversy over the admission of Texas, 
that he did not believe the framers of the Constitution 
contemplated the annexation of foreign territory, and 
that, for his part, he believed it to be for the interest of 
the Union " to remain as it is, without diminution and 
without addition."^ We have now, however, more light 
as to the real intention of the founders, from the published 
letters of Gouverneur Morris, whose pen put the Consti- 
tution in form. No " decree de crescendo imperioy he 
wrote at the time of the Louisiana purchase, was inserted 
in it, because no boundaries could be wisely or safely as- 
signed to our future expansion. " I knew as well then as 
I do now that all North America must at length be 
annexed to us, — happy, indeed, if the lust of possession 
stop there."' 

If, on the other hand, it had been intended to keep the 
Union forever within the limits then existing, we may be 
sure that an express prohibition would have been inserted. 
This was Gallatin's view when Jefferson consulted his 
cabinet as to the Louisiana negotiation. The adverse 
position, he wrote to the President, must be that " the 
United States are precluded from and renounce altogether 

1 Works, vi, 402. » Ljfe and Works, ix, 631. 

3 Writings, iii, 185. • * Works, i, 357. 

^ Diary and Works, ii, 443. 



12 

the enlargement of territory, a provision sufficiently im- 
portant and singular to have deserved to be expressly 
inserted." Jefferson's reply to this letter shows his own 
opinion more fully than it is elsewhere given in his cor- 
respondence. " There is," he wrote, " no constitutional 
difficulty as to the acquisition of territory, and whether, 
when acquired, it may be taken into the Union by the 
Constitution as it now stands, will become a question of 
expediency."' 

It was a time, moreover, for action rather than for 
deliberation. Between a question of constitutional con- 
struction on the one hand, and on the other, a possible 
French army under a Napoleon, ascending the Mississippi 
to reconquer a New World, the administration was not 
disposed to hesitate long as to the choice. Jefferson 
made the purchase, and the people approved the act. 
Never were fifteen millions of American money better 
spent. 

The next opportunity to add to our possessions came 
in 1819, when we bought the Floridas of Spain, or at least 
a release of her title and pretensions to them, and the 
Supreme Court of the United States, being soon after- 
wards called upon to say what relation we bore to the 
new acquisition, held, to the surprise of some of the strict 
constructionists among our public men, that the right of 
the United States to wage war and to make treaties nec- 
essarily implied the right to acquire new territory, whether 
by conquest or purchase. This decision came from the 
lips of our greatest Chief Justice, John Marshall, and 
has been repeatedly reaffirmed by his successors on the 
bench.2 

Neither the Louisiana nor the Florida purchase had 
presented the question of the absorption of a foreign 
sovereignty. North Carolina and Rhode Island had 
finally acceded to the Union, not in such a character, but 
as having been members with the other States of a per- 
petual Confederation, for which there had been substi- 
tuted a new form of government. 

' Gallatin's Writings, i, 114. 

« Mormon Church, v, United States, 136 U. S. Rep., 1, 43. 



13 

In 1836, however, came an application by the republic 
of Texas for admission into the Union, as a new and equal 
State. 

The dominant population there had always been com- 
posed of immigrants from the United States. John 
Quincy Adams, when President, had endeavored to buy 
it from Mexico, 1 and similar propositions from President 
Jackson had also been made without success.^ In 1836, 
Texas claimed to have achieved her independence, and 
sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate a treaty 
of annexation. Mexico regarded her still as one of her 
provinces, and the United States delayed recognition of 
the new government until it should have proved its ability 
to defend its own existence. This was deemed sufficiently 
established after a year or two, and we, as well as the 
leading European powers, maintained diplomatic relations 
with Texas for several years, while the question of annex- 
ation was pending. 

The opposition to the measure was led by John Quincy 
Adams, who introduced into the House of Representa- 
tives, in 1838, this resolution: 

''Resolved, That the power of annexing the people of 
any independent foreign state to this Union is a power 
not delegated by the constitution of the United States to 
their congress, or to any department of their government, 
but reserved by the people. That any attempt by act of 
congress or by treaty would be a usurpation of power, 
unlawful and void, and which it would be the right and 
the duty of the free people of the Union to resist and 
annul." 

If, he said, Texas is annexed, it would be such a viola- 
tion of our national compact as " not only inevitably to 
result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it, 
and we not only assert that the people of the free States 
ought not to submit to it, but we say with confidence 
that they would not submit to it." 

On the other hand, many of the Southern leaders 
announced that if Texas were not annexed, and thus an 

> In 1827. Diary, vii, 239. ' Jackson offered $5,000,000 for it in 1835. 



opportunity offered for the extension of slavery, there 
would be a dissolution of the Union by the act of the 
South. 

Early in 1844, a treaty of annexation was concluded, 
but the Senate rejected it by a vote of more than two to 
one. The admission of Texas was made the main issue 
in the Presidential election of the year. The Democratic 
party favored it in their platform, and won a decisive 
victory. President Tyler, thereupon, in his message to 
Congress at its December session, recommended that the 
verdict of the people be ratified by an Act of annexation, 
which should adopt and make into law the terms of agree- 
ment already agreed on by the two governments. 

A compromise bill was passed, by which the consent of 
Congress was given to the erection of Texas into a new 
State of the United States, but the President was author- 
ized, should he deem it better to accomplish the same 
purpose by a treaty, to proceed in that manner. Presi- 
dent Tyler promptly approved the Act, and believing 
that any treaty he might negotiate would fail in the 
Senate, proceeded under the legislative clause, and on the 
last day of his term of office hurried off an envoy to 
Texas to obtain the consent of that Republic. This was 
promptly given, and Texas, therefore, came into the 
Union in 1845, not by treaty but by virtue of a statute of 
the United States supported by similar legislation of her 
own. 

It is obvious that this mode of proceeding trenched 
directly on the importance of the States, in so far as they 
can be regarded as constituents of the Federal govern- 
ment. Treaty making was confided by the Constitution 
exclusively to the President and Senate, while the com- 
position of the Senate was made such as not only to 
secure, upon every question of that nature, an equal voice 
to each State, but to guaranty a minority of the States 
against being overborne by anything less than two-thirds 
of all. The Texas precedent gave the popular branch 
equal powers as to the admission of a foreign State, and 
made the votes of a bare majority of the upper house 
sufficient. 



15 



From a very early period Cuba has been regarded by 
leading Southern statesmen as a desirable acquisition for 
us. In 1809, Jefferson wrote in regard to this to Presi- 
dent Madison, that " it will be objected to our receiving 
Cuba that no limit can then be drawn to our future 
acquisitions. Cuba can be defended by us without a 
navy ; and this develops the principle which ought to 
limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which 
would require a navy to defend it.'" 

A few years later, John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of 
State, in his instructions to our minister to Spain, wrote 
that Cuba and Porto Rico were natural appendages to our 
continent, and Cuba had become " an object of transcend- 
ent importance to the commercial and political interests 
of our Union. Its commanding position, with reference 
to the Gulf of Mexico and the West India seas; the 
character of its population ; its situation midway between 
our southern coast and the island of San Domingo ; its 
safe and capacious harbor of Havana, fronting a long line 
of our shores destitute of the same advantage ; the nature 
of its productions and of its wants, furnishing the supplies 
and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profit- 
able and mutually beneficial, give it an importance in the 
sum of our national interests with which that of no other 
foreign territoi-y can be compared, and little inferior to 
that which binds the different members of this Union 
together. Such, indeed, are, between the interests of that 
island and of this country, the geographical, commercial, 
moral, and poHtical relations formed by nature, gathering 
in the process of time, and even now verging to maturity, 
that, in looking forward to the probable course of events 
for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possi- 
ble to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to 
our Federal Republic will be indispensable to the contin- 
uance and integrity of the Union itself. 

" It is obvious, however, that for this event we are not 
yet prepared. Numerous and formidable objections to 
the extension of our territorial dominions beyond sea 

' See also John Quincy Adams' Diary, v, 38. 



i6 

present themselves to the first contemplation of the sub- 
ject ; obstacles to the system of policy by which alone 
that result can be compassed and maintained are to be 
foreseen and surmounted, both from at home and abroad ; 
but there are laws of political as well as of physical gravita- 
tion ; and if an apple, severed by the tempest from its 
native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, 
forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with 
Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only 
towards the North American Union, which, by the same 
law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom. "^ 



The immediate object in view was to prevent Great 
Britain from acquiring Cuba. Jefferson wrote to Presi- 
dent Monroe, at about the same time (1823) that, should 
Great Britain take it, he would not be for going to war 
for it, " because the first war on other accounts will give 
it to us, or the island will give itself to us when able to 
do so." If we could get it peaceably, he said, it " would 
fill up the measure of our well being." President Polk 
tried to buy it from Spain, and a hundred millions is said 
to have been the sum offered. 

In 1852, Great Britain and France proposed to us the 
formation of a tripartite agreement, b}'^ which each power 
should disclaim forever anj' intention to obtain possession 
of the island, and all undertake to discountenance any 
attempts to acquire it on the part of any other govern- 
ment. President Fillmore declined the overture, but in 
referring to it in his annual message, said, that were Cuba 
" comparatively destitute of inhabitants or occupied by a 
kindred race, I should regard it, if voluntarily ceded by 
Spain, as a most desirable acquisition. But under exist- 
ing circumstances, I should look upon its incorporation 
into our Union as a very hazardous measure. It would 
bring into the Confederacy a population of a different 
national stock, speaking a different language, and not 
likely to harmonize with the other members." 

President Fillmore had, however, proposed and entered 
into a somewhat similar convention, two years before, 
with Great Britain, with reference to Central America. 

1 Wharton's Dig. of Int. Law, I, 361. 



17 

By this the contracting parties covenanted that neither 
would ever occupy, colonize, or assume any dominion 
over any part of it. Mr. Buchanan, while our min- 
ister to England in 1854, in alluding to this Clayton- 
Bulwer convention of April 19, 1850, in a communication 
to the British foreign department, used this language: 

" Both parties adopted this self-denying ordinance for 
the purpose of terminating serious misunderstandings 
then existing between them, which might have endangered 
their friendly relations. Whether the United States 
acted wisely or not in relinquishing their right as an inde- 
pendent nation, to acquire territory in a region on their 
own continent, which may become necessary for the secu- 
rity of their communication with their important and 
valuable possessions on the Pacific, is another and a differ- 
ent question. But they have concluded the convention ; 
their faith is pledged, and under such circumstances, they 
never look behind the record." 

The treaty of 1848, which closed the Mexican War, had 
given us, on payment of $15,000,000, New Mexico and 
California, and in 1853 another cession from Mexico — the 
" Gadsden purchase," added Southern Arizona at a cost 
of $10,000,000 more. These new possessions turned pub- 
lic attention to the necessity of a canal across the isthmus 
of Panama, and it was in the negotiations with reference 
to the status of such a canal that the covenant just men- 
tioned in the Clayton-Bulwer convention was proposed 
by our government and accepted by Great Britain. But 
the prospect of such a canal made the command of the 
entrance to the Gulf of Mexico doubly important to us, 
and gave a new color to our diplomacy regarding Cuba. 
Edward Everett, in one of his communications to the 
British minister, when Secretarj^ of State, in 1852, said 
that " territorially and commercially it would in our hands 
be an extremely valuable possession. Under certain 
contingencies it might be almost essential to our safety." 

The Ostend manifesto of 1854 emphasized these con- 
siderations, and intimated quite strongly that if a peace- 
ful cession could not be accomplished, a conquest might 
be dictated by the law of self-preservation. 
3 



i8 

President Buchanan devoted three pages of his second 
annual messag-e, in 1858, to the Cuban question, referring 
to the fact that former administrations had repeatedly en- 
deavored to purchase the island. The increasing trade of 
the Mississippi valley, he said, and the position of Cuba 
as commanding the mouth of the river rendered its pos- 
session " of vast importance to the United States," and, 
trusting in the efficacy of ready money, he recommended 
an appropriation by Congress, to enable him to make an 
advance to Spain, should he be able to negotiate a cession, 
immediately on the signature of the treaty, and before its 
ratification by the Senate. A bill appropriating $30,000,- 
000 was thereupon introduced in the House, and favorably 
reported, but no further progress was made. In his 
messages of 1859 ^"^ i860, the President repeated his 
recommendation of a purchase, urging that it would se- 
cure the immediate abolition of the slave trade ; but the 
forces that were working towards something greater, the 
aboHtion of slavery, were such as to render any serious 
consideration of the Cuban question now impossible. 

An Act passed under the Buchanan administration, 
which is still on the statute books. Rev. Stat. Title LXXII, 
expHcitly affirms the power of the United States to 
acquire foreign territory by right of discovery, and is also 
of importance as one of the few laws by which large 
powers, not belonging strictly to the executive function, 
have been placed by Congress in the hands of the President. 
This statute provides that whenever any of our citizens 
discovers and takes possession of any guano deposits on 
any island, rock or key, which does not belong to any 
other government, "such island, rock or key may at the 
discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining 
to the United States." All laws as to crimes and offences 
committed on the high seas are extended over such places. 
Trade in the guano is to be regulated as is our ordinary 
coasting trade. The United States shall not be obliged 
to retain possession of such places after the guano has 
been removed. 

The island of Navassa, some two miles long, lying be- 



19 

tween San Domingo and Jamaica, discovered in 1857, is 
now a part of the United States, under this Act of 1856. 
Not long ago there were a hundred and fifty persons Hv- 
ing on it, all engaged in the removal of the guano. One 
of them killed another, and was promptly punished by 
the Courts of the United States. 

Under President Lincoln's administration, the country 
had enough to think of in trying to preserve its territory, 
without endeavoring to enlarge it. He did, however, 
recommend to Congress in 1861, the consideration of a 
colonization scheme by which the freedmen of the South 
and such of our free colored population as might desire it, 
might be transported to some foreign land, where in a 
climate congenial to them, they might build up a new 
community. To carry out this plan, " may," he said, " in- 
volve the acquiring of territory and also the appropriation 
of money beyond that to be expended in the territorial 
acquisition. Having practiced the acquisition of territory 
for nearly sixty years, the question of constitutional 
power to do so is no longer an open one with us. . . . 
On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of 
money with the acquisition of territory, does not the 
expediency amount to absolute necessity : — that without 
which the Government itself cannot be perpetuated ? " 

When, a year later, slavery was abolished in the District 
of Columbia, $500,000 was appropriated to aid in coloniz- 
ing such of the freedmen as might wish to emigrate, in 
Hayti or Liberia. A few were aided to leave the country 
in this way, most of whom were taken by the government 
to lie a Vache, off the coast of New Granada, and the 
rest to Liberia. 

Alaska was bought of Russia, by treaty, in 1867, for 
$7,200,000. The House of Representatives insisted for a 
time on the necessity of an Act of Congress to legalize the 
purchase, but the Senate refused to concur in this view, 
and the point was finally yielded. By this acquisition we 
came into possession not only of a part of the continent 
remote from our own, but of distant islands, some of them 
over two thousand miles from the nearest point of sea 



20 

coast previously within our jurisdicton. The test of con- 
tiguity, as determining the right of annexation, was now, 
therefore, finally and deliberately abandoned. It was 
abandoned also with almost unanimous acquiescence, 
since there were but two votes in the Senate against the 
ratification of the treaty. 

Had President Jackson had his way, a similar position 
would probably have been taken by our government 
thirty years before, for. in 1835, he authorized our minis- 
ter to Mexico to offer her half a million dollars for a 
cession of the bay of San Francisco and the adjacent 
shore.' 

In the same year which witnessed the purchase of 
Alaska, Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, also negotiated 
a treaty with Denmark for the cession of the West India 
islands of St. Thomas and St. John, on our paying her 
$7,500,000 for them. President Johnson, in his annual 
message for 1867, thus alludes to their proposed annexa- 
tion : 

" In our revolutionary war, ports and harbors in the 
West India islands were used by our enemy, to the great 
injury and embarrassment of the United States. We had 
the same experience in our second war with Great Britain. 
The same European policy for a long time excluded us 
even from ti'ade with the West Indies, while we were at 
peace with all nations. In our recent civil war the rebels, 
and their piratical and blockade-breaking allies, found 
facilities in the same ports for the work, which they too 
successfully accomplished, of injuring and devastating the 
commerce which we are now engaged in rebuilding. We 
labored especially under this disadvantage, that European 
steam vessels, emplo3^ed by our enemies, found friendly 
shelter, protection, and supplies in West Indian ports, 
while our naval operations were necessarily carried on 
from our own distant shores. There was then a universal 
feeling of the want of an advanced naval outpost between 
the Atlantic coast and Europe. The duty of obtaining 
such an outpost peacefully and lawfully, while neither 
doing nor menacing injury to other States, earnestly en- 
gaged the attention of the Executive department before 

1 Whart. Int. Law Dig., I, 557. 



21 

the close of the war, and it has not been lost sight of since 
that time. A not entirely dissimilar naval want revealed 
itself during the same period on the Pacific coast. The 
required foothold there was fortunately secured by our 
late treaty with the Emperor of Russia, and it now seems 
imperative that the more obvious necessities of the Atlan- 
tic coast should not be less carefully provided for. A 
good and convenient port and harbor, capable of easy 
defence, will supply that want. With the possession of 
such a station by the United States, neither we nor any 
other American nation need longer apprehend injury or 
offence from any transatlantic enemy. I agree with our 
early statesmen that the West Indies naturally gravitate 
to, and may be expected ultimately to be absorbed by the 
continental States, including our own. 1 agree with them 
also that it is wise to leave the question of such absorption 
to this process of natural political gravitation. The 
islands of St. Thomas and St. John's, which constitute a 
part of the group called the Virgin islands, seemed to 
offer us advantages immediately desirable, while their 
acquisition could be secured in harmony with the princi- 
ples to which I have alluded." 

At this time the relations of President Johnson to the 
Senate were anything but harmonious, and mainly from 
this cause, I think, the treaty was rejected in 1868, although 
the inhabitants of both islands had alread}^ voted in favor 
of annexation. 

Shortly after Gen. Grant's accession to the Presidency, 
he concluded the negotiation with the Dominican Repub- 
lic, begun by Secretary Seward at the close of the pre- 
ceding administration,' of a treaty of annexation of so 
much of the island of San Domingo as was not included 
within the limits of Hayti. As in the case of Texas, two 
independent sovereignties thus contracted for the absorp- 
tion of one into the other, but unlike Texas, San Domingo 
was not to enter the Union as one of the States that 
compose it. The treaty was rejected by a tie vote in the 
Senate. In his next message to Congress, the President 
earnestly recommended legislative action in the same di- 
rection. 

' Seward's Works, v. 29. 



22 

" The acquisition of San Domingo," he said, " is desira- 
ble because of its geographical position." . . . "At 
present our coast trade between the States bordering on 
the Atlantic and those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico 
is cut into by the Bahamas, and the Antilles. Twice we 
must, as it were, pass through foreign countries to get by 
sea from Georgia to the West coast of Florida." . . " The 
acquisition of San Domingo is an adherence to the * Mon- 
roe Doctrine ' ; it is a measure of natural protection ; it is 
asserting our just claim to a controlling influence over the 
great commercial traffic soon to flow from West to East 
by way of the Isthmus of Darien." 

Congress responded to these appeals by sending an able 
commission. Senator Wade, President Andrew D. White, 
and Dr. Samuel G. Howe of Boston, to visit San Do- 
mingo. They reported in favor of its annexation, but the 
project went no farther. 

The opposition to Grant in this matter was started by 
Charles Sumner, then at the head of the Senate Commit- 
tee on Foreign Relations, who seems to have been gov- 
erned largely by his interest in the colored race.' To 
them, he believed, belonged " the equatorial belt." They 
had established a republic in Hayti. If San Domingo 
were annexed to the United States, Hayti must inevitably 
decline, and there would be a new argument for those 
who denied the capacity of the negro for self-government. 

Down to the close of the reconstruction period, which 
followed the Civil War, there was, indeed, no time after 
the Louisiana purchase when the question of the right 
and policy of annexation, with respect to any foreign ter- 
ritory, was not determined by every public man largely 
in accordance with his views of its bearing on the future 
of the Southern blacks. Grant, himself, was looking to 
San Domingo as the site of further States of our Union, 
peopled and governed by colonies of our new class of 
freed men. 

The American people, in the words of Henry Adams, 
began the century with the " ambition to use the entire 
continent for their experiments."'" Jefferson was their 

' Memoir and Letters, iv, 448. ^ History of the United States, ii, 301. 



23 

leader, and of all American statesmen he best understood 
and represented the popular sentiment of his day. What 
Lincoln was to the North, Jefierson was to the country. 
But Jefferson had the larger, though less balanced mind. 
He was an idealist and an optimist. With equal rights 
and opportunties to every citizen, and to every State, he 
feared no extension of territory for a Union resting on 
community of interest and individual liberty. Jefferson 
never believed that the prosperity of the South was de- 
pendent on the institution of slavery, but, for half a 
century, among his successors in the conduct of the 
government, were many who did. Our policy as to 
annexation, therefore, soon became a sectional question, 
and so continued until the Southern negro was given 
not only freedom, but the right of suffrage. 

President Grant's administration in 1872, by an agree- 
ment between one of our naval officers and the chief of 
Tatuila, one of the Samoan islands, obtained the exclusive 
privilege of establishing a coaling station at the port of 
Pango Pango, and President Hayes took possession of 
the privilege ceded in 1879. 

The arts of civilization were introduced into the Sand- 
wich Islands by American missionaries in the first quarter 
of this century, and their trade has always been largely 
with this country. They lie three hundred miles nearer 
San Francisco than the outermost of the Aleutian islands, 
which came to us as a part of the Alaska purchase. In 
1843, ^" English officer, without authority, took posses- 
sion of Hawaii, in behalf of the Queen, but this action 
was promptly disavowed by his government. Our Sec- 
retary of State, Mr. Legare, wrote, upon this event, to 
our minister to England, that these islands bore such 
peculiar relations to us that we might feel justified in 
interfering by force to prevent their conquest by any 
of the great powers of Europe.' Great Britain and 
France, however, allayed any ill-feeling on the part of 
our government by a convention made during this year, 

' Whai-t. lut. Law, Dig., I, 418. 



24 

by which each covenanted never to take possession of 
the islands or assume a protectorate over them. 

In 1853, Mr. Marcy, as Secretary of State, in instruc- 
tions to our minister to France, wrote of them thus : " It 
seems to be inevitable that they must come under the 
control of this Government." Two years later he in- 
formed our minister to Hawaii that we would receive 
the transfer of territorial sovereignty of the islands. In 
1868, the subject was again brought up, but Secretary 
Seward, fresh from his disappointments with reference to 
the Danish West Indies, wrote our minister that the time 
was unfavorable for the consideration of annexation pro- 
positions by the United States. 

By the treaty of reciprocity in 1875, the two countries 
were drawn closer together, and the commerce between 
them was soon doubled. 

Early in the present year, a treaty of annexation was 
laid before the Senate, but withdrawn on the accession 
of the new administration. In his message accompanying 
the treaty, President Harrison said that the deposition of 
the Queen had left but two courses open to the United 
States, the assumption of a protectorate, or annexation. 
The views of the present administration may be inferred 
from President Cleveland's first message, in 1884, in which 
he said, " I do not favor a policy of acquisition of new and 
distant territory, or the incorporation of remote interests 
with our own." 

The annexation of Canada, so ardently desired by 
Franklin and all the statesmen of the Revolution, has 
never since that period been made a subject of formal 
diplomatic discussion. Its growth in wealth and popu- 
lation, and its federation into a great Dommion of many 
provinces, are evidently paving the way to independence. 
When that time comes, annexation will follow. 

Her institutions are every year becoming better fitted 
to coalesce with our own, as her provinces, each with a 
life and history of its own, participate by their represen- 
tatives in general legislation at a common capital, under 
an executive who, during his term of office, is more 



25 

secure in his position than the prime minister of Great 
Britain, and hardly more subject to the pleasure of the 
sovereign. 

The French Canadians are of a different race and 
tongue and religion from that of most of the Americans 
of the Revolutionary era. But if they were not afraid 
to admit them to citizenship of the United States in the 
eighteenth century, surely we need not be when the time 
comes, in the twentieth. The Americans of to-day are a 
composite race, and universal religious toleration has 
made us sensible that men's religious beliefs are danger- 
ous to the community only when they are forced to con- 
ceal or suppress them. The Roman church has frankly 
accepted the right of every people to such form of 
government as they may choose for themselves, and the 
million of Catholics in Canada would be no more, as 
such, a factor in American politics than the million of 
Catholics who arc to-day inhabitants of New York, or 
the more than a million who are citizens of New England. 

The different provinces of Canada are so situated with 
respect to each other, and the natural boundaries of sepa- 
ration between most of them are such, that their trade 
gravitates southward to the United States, in seeking its 
center of distribution. What it has to sell, it can sell best 
to us. What it needs to buy, it finds best here. 

The immense area which the Dominion of Canada now 
includes, it is beyond the powers of any mere colony or 
group of colonies to bring under the full influences of 
civilization. As fast as it approaches that end, so fast it 
also approaches the necessity of independence of Great 
Britain. 

It is probable that Great Britain would make little ob- 
jection to the severance from her possessions of so costly 
and unremunerative a dependence. Before the negotia- 
tion of the treaty of Washington, our Secretary of State, 
Mr. Fish, in conversation with Sir Edward Thornton, the 
British minister, said that our " Alabama " claims were 
too large to be settled in money, and intimated that a 
cession of Canada might be accepted as a satisfactory 
adjustment. The reply was that England did not wish to 
4 



26 

keep Canada, but could not part with it without the con- 
sent of its population.' 

The original area of the United States, before the 
Louisana purchase, was perhaps, a million of square 
miles.^ That acquisition, and the subsequent cession of 
the Floridas, much more than doubled our territory. 
Texas then came to us with three hundred thousand 
square miles, and Mexico, in 1848 and 1853, ceded a some- 
what greater number. In Alaska, we received, in 1867, 
an addition of over half a million, and thus our total area 
now is a little more than 3,500,000 square miles. 

Canada and Newfoundland cover about the same extent 
of territory, or over 3,524,000 square miles, estimating for 
part of British Columbia not yet accurately surveyed. 

At the time of the Revolution, the latest authority on 
American geography was the American Gazetteer, pub- 
lished in London, in 1776. It gave the total area of the 
North American continent, with a precision not aimed at 
by modern statisticians, at 3,699,087 square miles. The 
founders of the United States did not dream that the 
narrow line of States they had drawn together could in a 
century come to include a territory of three millions and 
a half of square miles, and still have bej^ond them another 
area of equal magnitude, and much of it of equal fertility 
and natural resources, into which to expand, in the next 
century. But that expansion 1 believe it is our destiny 
to accomplish, and by no other means than those of peace 
and mutual good will. The good faith of the nation was 
pledged by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty against further 
extension to the southward, though it is doubtful whether 
this is still binding upon us f but the North American 
continent with every island on the east, and the Hawaiian 
group upon the west, all bound to it as satellites to their 

' Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, iv, 409. 

" This is the estimate given in Morse's American Geography, published in 
1793. 

* See Eeport of Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of Dec, 22, 1892, 
on Senate Bill No. 1218. 



27 

planet will, if we continue in our historic policy as to an- 
nexation, eventually come under the flag of the United 
States. 

It has been argued with great force by an eminent 
authority on American constitutional law,' that our plan 
of government makes no provision for a colonial system. 
But the relations of an extra-territorial possession to the 
United States can never be those of a colony to a 
European power. Such a colony has generally been 
treated as a dependency held for the benefit of the com- 
mercial interests of the mother country. Its trade, con- 
ducted by others and for others, has brought Httle benefit 
to its own inhabitants, to whom the navigation laws im- 
posed upon them by a distant power have often seemed 
a kind of spoliation, under the name of protection. 

But any possessions, separated from the continent, 
which the United States 'may acquire, can rely on being 
governed under some system devised for the interest of 
all concerned, and administered by their own inhabitants, 
so far as they may show a capacity for self-government. 

Nor yet need we fear that the United States would not, 
if the occasion demanded, rule with a strong hand, when 
we recall the almost despotic system of administration 
which under the administration of Jefferson was forced 
upon the unwilling inhabitants of the Louisiana and 
Orleans territories, and maintained until they had learned 
the real quaUties and conditions of American citizenship. 

Up to the present time the cost of such of our territory 
as has come to us by purchase, has been, in all, as follows : 

1803, Louisiana, $15,000,000 

1819, Florida, 5,000,000 

1848, California and New Mexico, 15,000,000 

1853, Arizona 10,000,000 

18G7, Alaska, 7,200,000 

Total 152,200,000 

^ Judge Cooley in the Forum for June, 1893, vol. xv, p. 393. 



28 

It has been cheaply bought, even if we add to these 
sums the expenditures in the Seminole War, which fol- 
lowed the Florida purchase, and of the Mexican War, 
which had so close a connection with those which came 
next. 

The policy of annexation, up to the time of the Civil 
War, was mainly pressed by Southern influence, and 
largely in the interest of slavery. But slavery would 
never have been overthrown, had not the country spread 
out over the Northern portions of the Louisiana pur- 
chase and the Pacific coast. It was the new States, on 
new territory, that turned the balance against the South 
in the final struggle. Into them poured the tide of immi- 
gration which Southern statesmen had vainly hoped the 
severity of Northern winters would repel. 

A Congress of Southern Governors was held at Rich- 
mond in April of this year, to devise means to attract 
emigrants to their section of the country. I hope their 
plans may prosper, but there is no stronger power in 
directing movements of population than that of sentiment, 
especially when resting on tradition. A public sentiment 
against slavery kept immigration from the Southern States 
while slavery endured, and a traditionary feeling keeps it 
from them still. Another generation must pass away 
before the Carolinas or Arkansas will be as attractive as 
Nebraska and Oregon, to those who seek new homes 
across the sea. 



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